Article: The Attitude towards Ugly People in Rabbinic Literature versus European Folktales

One must refrain from ugliness And from what is ugliness-like, And from what is in its likeliness. (BaMidbar Raba 10:8) This article compares two corpora of folktales in Israeli culture - early rabbinical texts and European folktales. The article presents major examples of folktales of ugliness, and the attitude towards ugliness in both corpora, and analyses them in various manners (philosophical, gender-wise, anthropological).

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Article: The Witch Hunt in Ashkelon as Retold by Contemporary Spiritualities: From Embarrassment to Treasure Trove

Once upon a time, thousands of years ago, dozens of witches operated at the promiscuous city Ashkelon. This study (some 8,000 words; and a similar one published in English - as follows) deals with contemporary spiritual interpretations of an ancient Jewish legend - on a witch hunt executed by Rabbi Shim'on ben Shatach at Ashkelon in the 2nd century B.C.. It presents a comparison of three spiritual leaders in Israel, each re-designing the old story in a different way, thus expressing various values - in relation to Judaism, to their feminism's character, and to the place of magic in the world. The article was published in the anthology "Between Times - Ritual and Text in a Changing Society", edited by Haim Hazan, Rachel Shar'abi, and Inbal Esther Sikurel, in the Hermeneutics and Cuture series at Carmel publishimg house.

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